It was probably since the Burning Man in 2013 that I didn’t had a proper holiday. Dude, seriously… Two jobs later and a lot of relocations after it was about time. The three years break made the destination almost a dramatic decision to take: I had no will to leave the sort of my summer holiday up to any chance. The budget was also a factor. Me and my (soon to be ex-) girlfriend B. had a couple of Ryanair sessions to narrow down the best candidates. When the compass stopped spinning, the arrow pointed inevitably down south. It’s a special compass.
Even with an affordable flight, the overall trip could have been easily expensive: sunny destination on the seaside during the high season… anywhere we looked there were only few airbnb options still available and for $$$. The only way no ending up completely ripped off was to know when and where we would have slept, have then a good look into our options and book everything in advance.
I went through all the possible activities and sightseeings of the whole damn Country and selected the most promising stuff along a reasonable journey. This insane (and honestly, also control-freak) task alone led spending my evenings of the three or four weeks prior the departure planning any sort of detail, leaving pretty much nothing left to decide but the ice cream flavour.
The first useful thing that I learned was that in Croatia the local bus services where substantially cheaper that Flixbus. On the other side their timetables were scattered here and there on the web, sometimes with different, contrasting information. The bus company websites were not very clear either. I would have had to double-check each of our departure times once there.
I was in a hurry to reach anything worth calling a beach, as my birthday was just one day away and I wanted to treat myself properly. I booked one night in Split just to split (uh uh uh) the trip from Zadar airport to the island of Kvar, otherwise we would have reached it completely exhausted. We would have visited Zadar on the way back.
The moment the bus started moving we spotted Santa Claus in shorts and flip-flops walking past the platforms. I just had time to take a blurry picture before the bus gained speed.
Split turned out to be a sweet surprise, although the arrival had been pretty much rough… a ‘friend’ of the lady renting us the room picked us up and drove straight out of town, big time away from the location we were supposed to stay that night. We were about to cross the gate of a bungalow camping area when I demanded to stop the car and drive us back. She obeyed.
On our way back to the city center I called the lady and promised that I’d have wrote fire until I had her account removed from any hostel website on the face of the Planet. Thirty minutes later she called back and gave us the address of a central hostel, in which we could have slept for the same fare.
This is how we discovered that Split has two old towns! The historical (and very touristic) city center and the most genuine one, made of small stone houses stacked up to the top of steep hill, curvy alleys and many many cats.
Our hostel had a wide view over town and the suburbs. The owner of the hostel hanged his paintings all over the place and promised that we would have been treated good anywhere in town if we just have mentioned his name. I obliged his cocky statement by blinking an eye, but finally I didn’t proofed his claim. We both thanked him and hit the sac bit big time.
The morning after I woke up with singing birds and the Sun filtering through the window shutter. My girl was still asleep, so I sneaked out of the room and out of the hostel, and walked all the way down from the hill. The sun was already strong, but the streets were tight enough to cast some refreshing shadows. I could also smell the smell of lunches being prepared… tomato sauces, spices and a multitude of other stuff being baked.
A portal introduced to a nice pedestrian square called Trg Republike (Republic Square). Quite touristic, nevertheless a cute place to walk by.
Through the opposite portal I reached a fish market. There was already nothing left, and it was too early for that sort of food anyway. The only thing left was a strong smell and a bunch of hungry seagulls, calling from the top of cover of the market.

I would have liked keep wandering around, but B. was probably awake, wondering where I ended up this time. I climbed the stairs of the hostel and found her on the big rooftop terrace. I emptied the shopping bad on a bench and we set up the breakfast table.
This time we left the hostel together and reached the center of the turistic old town. We had no idea what to expect, I only knew we had to look for the Diocletian’s Palace and the cathedral. Once there the top of the bell tower promised an interesting view of the town.
The stairs leading to the top were worthy of an Esher drawing. I was amazed by them, but this attraction worked in a totally different way for B., which start feeling vertigo and decided to go back downstairs. I waked down with her and then started walking again upstairs alone. Quite immediately I made an eye contact with a guy stuck with his back glued on the wall…
« s’all right, sir? »
« mh… I think I can’t go up… is it beautiful? »
« well… yeah, I must say it actually is » and I gave him a indulgent smile. « but if you are really afraid of heights, the way down isn’t actually any better ».
Like on a silent agreement, we stopped talking and looked above.
« why don’t you leave me your e-mail address? I can send you a couple of pictures from the top. what do you say? »
« here… »
He wrote me his address and went back to the entrance.
(by the way, the address was not right, ’cause the email got bounced. I’m sorry!!!)
It was actually a pity that they couldn’t enjoy the visit of the tower. As I was gaining more elevation a number of nice pictures popped up here and there. Once reached the top though, The view wasn’t actually as exciting as the ones from the stairs, but still worth it.
I turned back, looked down and realised how right I was when I talked to the men…
B. was chilling in the square in front of the cathedral, Trg Peristil, a place back in time, full of columns and as cosy as a living room. We didn’t really want to face the hot sun, so started walking around, protected by the shadow of the buildings. The light bounced against the top of the white brick-walls, but rarely managed to reach the ground.
It didn’t take that long to walk through the alleys of the whole historic center though, so we build up courage and dipped in the sunlight, heading to the port. Ended up on the closest beach to town that didn’t looked totally crap, got a seafood dinner and called it a day. Tonight we are in Kvar.
WORD OF THE DAY [croatian]: bok (Hi)